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Home , Blood on the Fields, Eric Reed (musician), Pearl Bailey

PD. BOX 24-O Ojar, Calif. iligiizletter 93024--0240 August I997 I Vol. 16 No. 8

The pianist Harold Danko has drawn up a facetious rider to his Other Voices contract, which has sped on fax machines and by mail to musicians I am a 30-year-old white male. I have always had a great everywhere. Danko lists a group of tunes he will not play tmless interest in music of all types. In my late teens I started to try out he is paid extra, begirming with Feelings at $786.79 and proceed- . I purchased a few albums to sample. Two of them were ing tluough Laras Theme from Dr Zhivago, More, Tie a Yellow albums. They just didn’t do anything for me. I Ribbon, New Ibrk New York, Hello Dolly, and, third highest on his liked them, but they didn’t encourage me to buy any more. I contempt list, a Noel Coward Medley, at $1,298.89. The runner-up assumed that this was a good sampling of jazz, since the media is the Medley. . " that I was exposed to at the time was pushing Wynton as the fi.lfl1l'€ But Danko’s most withering scorn goes to Andrew Lloyd ofjazz I went back to my , rock, folk, albums and didn’t try Webber, “hereinafter referred to as ‘the already rich-enough, jazz again for a while. minimally-talented composer(?)’. The rider says that Danko “does At the age of 26, I purchased ’s Etudes. Wow! That not perform or condone the performance of any work by Mr. album has made a major impact on me. I could feel something ” and it is “in the best interests of all when I listened to it, and still do. I have since become a Ron humankind to stop the dissemination of inept efforts of said Carter freak, buying anything he is associated with and making already-rich-enough, minimally-talented composer(?)” and he many trips to New York City to see the man who introduced me reserves the right to “publicly lambaste and humiliate any requester to jazz. Through his music I have been exposed to many different (hereinafier referred to as the ‘no-ears, bad-taste dork’) of such artists and have followed those artists through the tree of jazz material.” Wynton didn’t do this for me. The following joke circulates in the profession. Two prisoners I loved your book Cats ofAny Color. It has encouraged me to in adjacent cells are about to face the electric chair. The warden dive even deeper into my desire for the music. tells them they have a right to a last request. One of them says, Stephen Crawford, Burlington, Vermont “Yes. Before I go, can you play me the complete score ofPhantom of the Opera?” “Right away,” says the warden. And to the other prisoner: “Do Dishonored Honors you have a request?” ' . . . . such questionable honors as the Pulitzer Prize “Yes. Take me first, please.” Joseph L. Mankiewicz in All About Eve, 1950 In September, 1995, the Hartford Courant carried a story by one of its writers, Steve Metcalf, on the Lloyd Webber phenome- When I was writing a biography of Lemer and Loewe, I heard of non. an encounter between Alan Jay Lemer and Andrew Lloyd Webber. “Lloyd Webber,” he wrote, “is the most successful composer of Lemer, one of the most accomplished theater lyricists, had musical theater of our time, maybe ever. His shows —— Phantom of begun to feel left behind by history. Lloyd Webber was now the the Opera, Cats, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, and others — have hottest thing in musical theater. One or the other initiated a contact eamed him millions, some say billions, of dollars. to see if they might collaborate. “Yet the place that his music occupies in our collective heart Whether or not Lemer and Lloyd Webber wrote some experi- seems weirdly negligible. He seems to be a rich and famous mental songs together, I do not know. But one day, reportedly, composer whose music is not really liked very much.” Lloyd Webber said to Lemer something to this efi"ect: Alan, I feel Well, not by musicians. But certainly by somebody. Phantom you have become a friend. You’re an older man. Can you tell me of the Opera has been running in Toronto alone for seven years. why people seem so quickly to take a dislike to me? Trying to fathom why Lloyd Webber’s music should be so “Well,” Lemer said, “maybe it’s to save time.” popular — and failing to recognize that popular taste has been Bud Wrdney, for many years Alan’s associate and assistant, told steadily debased by rock music —— Metcalf wrote: me the story was true: Alan had recounted it on returning from “There is a vaguely recycled quality to many of Lloyd Web- lunch with Lloyd Webber. However, Lerner was not above ber’s tunes. Lloyd Webber has, possibly unconsciously, and well embellishing a story, and since he was the only source of this one within the permissible guidelines of the law, lifled musical ideas — it’s hardly likely that Lloyd Webber would have recounted the from others. _ incident — I didn’t use it. But the story circulated in the profes- “Within the music theater world, this issue has become a kind sion, repeated with such glee that from it one can deduce the of dark standing joke. On one of the public forums in the Internet, esteem in which Lloyd Webber is not held. His ego is so famous devoted to musical-theater issues, several popular files are reserved that I asked a certain prominent British musician if the legends exclusively for the sport of tracing Lloyd Webber tunes to their about it were true. “Oh yes,” I was told. “He believes he is the suspected source of, uh, inspiration. Twentieth Century Mozart.” “Example: Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera is

accused ofbeing partially lifted from not one but two earlier songs. “But compared to what we were given by Gershwin, Berlin, The opening few bars seem to recall Come to Me, Bend to Me Porter, Kem, Romberg, Victor Herbert, Harold Arlen, Harry from Lemer and Loewe’s Brigadoon, while a subsequent phrase Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen and other true masters of melody, the bears a powerful resemblance to an aria from Puccini’s The Girl great bulk of Webber’s work is not even second rate.” ofthe Golden West.” Discussing the 1970s, Clive Davis of The Times of London New Ibrk Times theater critic Margo Jefferson wrote: “Mr. recently wrote, “Given the quadruple blight of rock ‘supergroups,’ Lloyd Webber is a composer of lurid, melodramatic surfaces. His disco, punk, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it was hardly the brightest music has never shown itself capable of emotional depth or wit.” era for popular music . . . . ” She called the music of Sunset Boulevard “abysmal.” All of this, however, did not preclude Lloyd Webber’s receipt It won a Tony. of one of the highest “honors” in England. He was knighted some The Tony is thus among many “honors” that have debased their time ago; so was his lyricist Tim Rice, the chief characteristic of own currency by meretricious appointment. whose work is a trudging and unirnagirrative mediocrity. But Lloyd Webber has his defenders. Writer William Tynan in I am not one of the admirers of the British royal family. I have the Los Angeles magazine Live! suggested that his derogation was long thought they should be retired to their country estates, the result of the “jealousy of some of the theater community and required to pay taxes, and requested to maintain a decorous silence critics . . . . ” But one hears Lloyd Webber’s music disparaged by on public issues. The Queen has at last outdone herself in silliness. some of the most successful and infonned peoplein the business. Hansard, the British equivalent ofthe Congressional Record, noted Good musicians routinely deplore Lloyd Webber’s music, if not as this past February 26 that she had elevated Lloyd Webber further. sardonically as Harold Danko. And ifjealousy were the inspiration He is now Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber (note the added hyphen) of this contempt, why isn’t it applied to, say, , of Sydmonton, a baron for life. He was presented to the House of or Michel Legrand, or Antonio Carlos Jobim? There are fundamen- Lords in his robes. tal standards that are universally recognized in the musical world, It was not to be the last of the queen’s follies. and Lloyd Webber doesn’t meet them. Some years ago she awarded the OBE, the Order of the British What intrigued me was the vanity of Tynan’s projection. Empire, or what’s lefi of it, collectively to the Beatles. This so Instead of wondering why so many evolved and cultivated persons incensed war heroes who had received it that some of them sent loathe Lloyd Webber’s music and trying thereby to raise the level their medals back. Now she has knighted Paul McCartney, writer of his own taste, he takes it as a given that his own uninfonned of mediocre songs and major contributor to the decline of popular preferences are the measure of all art, an assumption, alas, by no music into what Steve Allen so aptly calls a cultural toilet. And, means uncommon in critics. He obviously lacks the musical be it noted, since so many of the songs of Lennon and McCartney background“ to know why his description of Lloyd Webber’s were seen as drenched with narcotics symbology, they can be ballads as “limpid and meltingly beautiful” is ludicrous. perceived as contributing to the drug epidemic that is dismantling Steve Allen wrote to Tynan, saying, “Some years ago I thought American society. A very few of their tunes were good, among that perhaps I was alone in my negative opinion of Mr. Webber them Norwegian Wood and The Fool on the Hill. Eleanor Rigby judged only as a composer. But when I solicited the views of a is something of a masterpiece. But most of their stuff was the good many of my peers in the music business, I found not just a epitome of banality. few allies but large numbers of them. Henry Mancini, a man with Knighthoods may come less easily in the future as the new a remarkable gift for melody, once said to me that he didn’t think prime minister, Tony Blair, moves Britain away fi'om what the Webber was a naturally melodic composer and added ‘and when Christian Science Monitor terms its “antediluvian honors system.” he does give us a pretty phrase, it’s apt to be from Puccini.’ “In the early l900s,” the paper said, “knighthoods and peerages “I am naturally assuming that you are familiar with the fact that were bought and sold, but that has been illegal since I925. Political Dont Cryfor Me, Argentina is strikingly similar to a Latino pop patronage on a large scale still exists, however. ballad of the l940s called Yours . . . . “When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in I979, she “And then there’s the clever standard Music ofthe Night, which lost no time in rewarding political friends with knighthoods and simply uses the main opening theme of a popular song of the other distinctions. According to The (London) Times, in the more 1920s called School Days . . . . than 12 years Baroness Thatcher was prime minister, she awarded “Another reason for Webber’s enormous success is the context knighthoods to I44 industrialists, two thirds of whom had given in which it has been presented, the post-I950 watershed date after funds to the ruling Conservative Party.“ which the true Golden Age of American popular composition In the present House of Commons, 20 of 164 Conservative MPs plunged into a cultural toilet from which it is unlikely ever to have knighthoods, one of 46 Liberal Democrats has the rank, and escape . . . . Against that background, Webber’s output is a blessed only one Labour has it out of 419 MPs. relief. What then, is the honor, all about? ‘ Money. McCartney, Lloyd Webber, and Rice brought a lot of made me squirm, muttering about the unprincipled avarice ofthose it to England. For the Queen to knight them dishonored an already who would so exploit this pathetic man. cheapened honor, and Lloyd Webber’s latest elevation only brings Reviewing the Avery Fisher conceit for the New York Daily into focus why certain Britons want the monarchy and all the News, Terry Teachout wrote: trappings of aristocracy abolished. “He has been, and gives every indication of still being, pro- Such follies are not exclusive to Britain. The most egregious foundly mentally ill. He grunts, mutters, sings, and talks to and, to any compassionate person, embarrassing, example of the himself. He seems not fully aware of where he is (a handler came coronation ofmediocrity is the peculiar odyssey of David Helfgott. onstage, presumably to make sure Helfgott understood it was time Helfgott, as you are surely aware unless you have spent the last to leave). And while he is imdeniably capable ofplaying the music year on vacation in a lead mine, is the Australian pianist whose . . . . at least in the limited sense of pushing down the right keys career has been exploited in the movie Shine. His recording of the in the right order, the results suggested a weird cross between a Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, released in January, reached gifted but uninhibited child and a player piano that has been badly the top of the Billboard classical chart in weeks. By the time regulated. _ Helfgott played a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in March (sold out “Two centuries ago, nice people went to asylums on Sunday within days of its announcement) it had sold 200,000 copies. and gawked at the inmates . . . . Today, we let the inmates out of Helfgott was bom in Melbourne and in I966 lefi to train at the the asylums and encourage them to live ‘normal’ lives. Some Royal College of Music in London. He retumed to Australia and preach strange religions on street comers; others give concerts at suffered what we are told rather indeterrninately was a “break- Avery Fisher Hall, and nice people pay $50 a head to watch them, down”, which kept him in an institution for some years. The movie and call it progress.” affects that his mental problems are the consequence not of Gerry Mulligan once said to me that he resented “fusion” whatever chemical aberration produces schizophrenia but of because it gave new young listeners a false impression ofwhatjan ruthless domination by his cruel father, which is more histrionic. is. This surely will be the effect on classical music of Helfgott’s The movie dramatically has him breaking down in the middle of national tour. Countless persons will have seen their first such a performance of the Rachmaninofi' Third; in fact, in London, he concert and will either have their perceptions permanently impeded won the Darmreuther award for his performance of it. or leave wondering what’s all the fuss about “classical” music. In the movie, his doctors won’t let him play the piano. Released But that isn’t the end of it. It will be the surprise of the year if finally from hospital, he plays (of all things) Rimsky-Korsakov’s the Helfgott of the Rach Three, as it is called in classical-music Flight of the Bumble Bee — hardly the most pianistic piece ever circles, isn’t nominated for a Grammy Award, for the nominations written — in a wine cellar, becoming a local celebrity. I-Ie meets are heavily based on sales and publicity. The Grammy Awards Gillian Murray, they fall in love and marry, and after he sleeps have been dishonored so many times by now that they are hardly with her he is at last able to play a concert again. Thus the fihn is worth discussing, but it is a good bet that Helfgott will lead them an interesting parable on the therapeutic value of getting laid. to a new nadir this year. Much of the myth of David Helfgott derives from a memoir about him by his wife, who manages his career and rims his life Another honor that has come under criticism is the MacArthur apparently with less cruelty but a far more efiicacious dominance Foundation “genius awards." The foundation’s definition ofgenius than his father ever did. seems a little unclear, but a good many of these awards are odd. Shine was a big hit in the United States which, as Terry One factor seems to be a strong bias to the politically “correct.” Teachout recently wrote, is “fundamentally an optimistic country These awards are extraordinarily valuable. As columnist John whose moviegoers like nothing better than watching affable heroes Leo noted in the June 26, I995, issue of U.S. News and World overcome seemingly insunnountable obstacles, have great sex, and Report, there isn’t anyone in the intellectual and artistic world who live happily ever afterward.” wouldn’t love to get one: a no-strings-attached outright gifl of My first exposure to Helfgott’s playing came during the TV between $250,000 and $350,000. broadcast of this year’s Academy Award extravaganm. I do not And, of course, public approbation as a genius. normally watch this annual orgy of Hollywood self-congratulation, One ofthese geniuses is Susan McClary ofUCLA, described in having some ideaof how the awards are manipulated. But the TV the award announcement as “a musicologist who explores the set was running on mindless as I went about some task or other, relationship between human experiences and music and relates the and,"afier much ado about the seven award nominations for Shine, creation of musical works to their social context.” McClary has the show’s handlers brought out the real David Helfgott, who discovered that classical music is full ofphallic themes, “assaultive bounded to the piano and attacked it. With a hunched posture pelvic pounding” as well as “the necessary purging or containment beyond the merely eccentric, he stabbed at the keys spastically, of the female,” and patriarchal violence. She says that Beethoven’s tone terrible, his touch brittle, his time erratic. The performance Ninth Symphony expresses “the throttling, murderous rage of a

rapist incapable of attaining release.” music course, if only to define for us Afro-Arnericarr “breathing” On the other hand, radical lesbian poet Adrienne Rich, a 1994 and trumpet fingering. Miles studied trumpet at Juilliard and, genius award winner, describes Beethoven in one poem as “A man unlike Bix Beiderbecke, used classical fingering. in terror of impotence / or infertility, not knowing the difference.” The statements over the years by both Crouch and Wynton Asked by Jolm Leo about the MacArthur awards for avant- Marsalis apparently don’t even try to conceal a bias against white garde drama, Donald Lyon, theater critic of the Wall Street musicians; and certainly with the two of them in power at Lincohr Journal, described two of them as “unusually tawdry awards for Center, a retrospective on Gil — or Bermy Goodman — are self-publicizing radicals rather than achievers of any kind. There unlikely, although last year there was a token nod to Gerry are many avant-garde people working today who deserve it more.” Mulligan. Citing more instances of strange recipients, Leo wrote that the Their bias is documented in my book Cats ofAny Color, and MacArthur Awards, founded in I981 “to reward high achievement in the Jauletter issues from which the essay was drawn. When the and high promise, are not what they once were. The science book came out, it was, as one could have predicted, subject to awards still seem to be given out fairly, but other selections pretty selective reporting in some newspapers. It was hinted that it was clearly have much more to do with politics or potential. A lot of racist, although most of it deals with white racism toward blacks the award winners are either idealogues like McClary or low-luster and only the last essay examines anti-white racism in jau. Far laborers in the traditional vineyards of the lefi . . . . from expressing my opinions, I merely did my reporter’s job, “The MacArthur Foundation is free to finance political activists citing the historical distortions presented by such writers as Herb and gender ideologues who believe in symphonic rape. It’s their Boyd. money. But it’s a shame that a program set up to honor achieve- Ironically, two or three of the reviewers in deploring it ment and excellence among creative people of all political complained that I did not state my opinion of Marsalis as a persuasions has deteriorated so quickly into narrow partisanship. musician. But I wasn’t evaluating his music, I was documenting his Lay the money on your political cronies, but let’s have no more policies. To discuss his music would have confiised the issue. prattle about ‘geniuses’.” But now I will discuss him as a musician. One of the MacArthur “geniuses” is Stanley Crouch, described I think he sounds like a very good conservatory trumpet player in the March 10, 1997, issue of New Ibrk magazine as “the jan with more of Europe than of black America in his work. I have critic and political pugilist.” never heard him play one thing that could be called original, or The magazine’s lntelligencer section reported that Crouch “has even creative. just enrolled in an introductory music class at the New School. Yet Marsalis, whose career has been propelled by publicity Music Theory and Reading is designed ‘for persons with little or lavishly financed by Columbia Records, has managed to accrue no background,’ according to the school’s catalogue.” powerful sycophants, including Peter Watrous of The New York The magazine noted that Crouch, whose 60 Minutes “political Times and Howard Reich of The Chicago Tribune. Watrous seems commentary with Molly Ivins and P.J. O’Rourke debuted to great to be owned and operated by Marsalis, Crouch, and the Lincoln fanfare only to be axed within weeks, also consults for Jan at Center publicity organization, and Reich (whom I once considered Lincoln Center.” It quoted Crouch as saying he signed up for the a promising writer, as I considered Marsalis during his Art Blakey course “to wage a more thorough war against certain areas of my sojourn a promising trumpet player) has virtually abandoned any own ignorance,” and, it added, “he has typical grandiose plans for pretense ofjoumalistic disinterest. Despite the unstinting support his latest endeavor.” of Watrous and Tom Piazza in The New lbrk Times, Reich, Don He said he and Wynton Marsalis are going to write an opera Heckmarr of The Los Angeles Times, and Richard Harrington of together in a few years, “so I want to be as prepared as possible, The Washington Past — surely a broad representation of a critical musically, to deal with him.” establishment in jazz ifthere is such a thing —— Stanley Crouch in The ambition to write an opera, surely a European fonrr, seems liner notes to said without so much as a blush odd in a man who fulminated in an essay titled Sketches of Pain that Marsalis “had been locked in pitched battle with the critical against the effete iirfiuences of European music on Miles Davis in establishment . . . . ” his collaborations with Gil Evans. He wrote in the February l2, When Marsalis was with Blakey, one could hear all his deriva- I990, issue of the New Republic, trashing the Miles Davis-Gil tions: a few bars of Miles Davis here, some there, and Evans albums Miles Ahead, , and Sketches ofSpain, so forth. The problem is that, unlike the truly great jaznnen (all of that they “reveal that Davis could be taken in by pastel versions of whom had their sources of inspiration), Marsalis has never European colors (they are given what value they have in these assimilated his influences. They are still obvious, like bones sessions by the Afro-Americari dimensions that were never far showing through the skin of a famished animal. from Davis’s embouchirre, breath, fingering) . . . . ” Keith Jarrett, in an interview with The New York Times Sunday I think it’s fair to say that Crouch needs to take an elementary Magazine, said: “Wynton imitates other people’s styles too well. You can’t learn to imitate everyone else without a real deficit. I’ve comments on this and other topics. He wrote: never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything “(It) is a grand, real-life appraisal of an art form brought to its at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like knees by the current negative forces dominating jazz vis-a-vis the a talented high-school trumpet player to me. He plays things really, jazz politic, the recording and broadcasting media, public relations really, really badly that you cannot screw up unless you are a bad and the press, especially The New York Times in its generous player. I’ve felt embarrassed listening to him, and I’m white. allotment of space to Peter Watrous, whose continuing, convoluted Behind his humble speech, there is an incredible arrogance. And views in support of retro-jazz as the ‘pure jazz’ leaves an impres- for a great black player who talks about the blues —- I’ve never sion of a movement having found a propagandist, apologist, and heard Wynton play the blues convincingly, and I challenge him to serial henchman, with or without its consent. The exploitation of a blues standoff any time. He’s jazzy the same way someone who the retro-jazz movement has had the effect of blanketing what was drives a BMW is sporty.” once an innovative art form with a soggy, mildewed towel . . . . In Musician magazine, Jarrett, in an essay entitled The Virtual “Keith Jarrett wrote the definitive reply to the present decadent Jazz Age, cited a huge list of great players prevalent in the early jazz mess which a great many of us of all colors and creeds have and continued: quietly deplored. For much too long we’ve composed replies in our “The incredible breadth of musical styles represented by these hearts, then reasoned them intoeoblivion with well-meaning names means that jazz was what it was supposed to be: a melting restraint. pot of truly original voices. Of course, in an age of insane “The Wrtual Jazz Age is nothing less than a manifesto that fascination with technical achievement (never mind to what goal), speaks to and for all of us who believe in the thought expressed to elevating a mere technician to godhead is, finally, possible, and, me by a reporter from Tass during an interview in France in the hey, why not? But don’t call it genius . . . . ’70s. ‘In Russia we believe that where there is jazz, fieedom isnot “When I heard these (l960s) players, I was influenced most by far behind.’ The current retro-jazz movement would put that their individuality, not their virtuosity or even their competence. freedom on hold for at least as long as Communism resisted They each showed me something of the potential that jazz is, and Perestroika. they hadn’t sold out. (By contrast, today’s Young Lions can stand “The very mean-spirited stuff coming out of Lincoln Center is in for each other because they’ve chosen the rules and they’re denigratirig to the very heart and soul of the jazz tradition which doing the same basic imitations.) has irmovation as its strongest aspect. It is the ongoing variety of “Now we’re told it’s a new jazz age by the same blind media imrovators and irmovations in jazz which secure its most profound industries who, along with a bunch ofopportunistic critics, lackeys, ofiering to the “musician —- the freedom to accept the challenge to panderers, cronies, and hangers-on, bought the Young Lions in the enrich its aheady eloquent language in one’s own essential way.” first place. It’s easy to handle them because they’re ultra-conserva- Russell concluded, “When one trifles with a serious art, one tive and not risk-takers and easy to track. But jau is about risking attacks the integrity of forces on a level infinitely higher and more everything to your personal music and accepting the consequences. powerful than the conglomerates attempting to control it. Otherwise you don’t get to sing your song. The young and old “Cheers to Keith Jarrett and Musician magazine.” players in the ’60s were singing their own songs. But today we Despite Stanley Crouch’s attempt to put such a spin on it, the have the Lions’ Club, and the media seem to have no room or reservations about Marsalis as musician and administrator have interest in anything else, even though real jazz is always alive come not from the critical establishment, which in large part has somewhere . . . . been obsequiously supportive, but largely from musicians, many of “There’s an old Bulgarian proverb: ‘Ifyou wish to drown, don’t them black, and one of whom discusses Marsalis’s new work later torture yourselves with shallow water’ in this issue. As for Peter Watrous, anyone who hopes to see the “Jan is about ecstasy, and ecstasy depends on cormectedness, Times jettison him doesn’t know how newspaper editors think. The and connectedness depends on heart, and this heart is a gift, and more the public hates a critic, in their view, the better he is for the this gifi can be used wisely or foolishly, too soon or too late. All newspaper and its circulation. Look how long the Times tolerated of our great jazz musicians did not question how much to use and the destructive theater criticism of Frank Rich. One of the worst, to what purpose. Technically competent and virtuoso players of and most vicious, classical music critics in American history was today (genius or otherwise) beware. These waters run deep . . . . Claudia Cassidy. She was hated by musicians, and she did great “Let’s hope there will be young players who see this (hostile damage, but The Chicago Tribune was apparently pleased with the takeover of jazz) as a new set of prison bars, meant only to be furor she constantly stirred, deeming it good for the newspaper, no flown through. If you are ready to fly, don’t put on a suit and join matter that it was not good for music. Howard Reich is likely to a club. Talk to the Birds.” continue entrenched at that paper, though he is, as one musician Composer George Russell, one of the original and brilliant put it, “an egregious flunky to Lincoln Center.” figures of jau composition, wrote a letter praising Jarrett’s But not quite all the critics are being taken in by Marsalis. And not all the good critics are on the major metropolitan newspapers. Gordon’s trombone solo or ’s elegant rumbling at the Bala Iyer, who writes for The Columbus Despatch, is arresting for piano is rare and momentary. Jazz does break through the murk, as his knowledge of jazz history, and a fresh cultural perspective on in Local Announcements . . . . the subject. He and Marsalis are the same age. Since you have “The liner notes reveal Stanley Crouch locked in mortal combat probably never heard of him, I should tell you about him. with the English language. No metaphor is safe from his mangle. “I was bom in Coimbatore, a small town in South India, in He is relentlessly hyperbolic. Thus, Marsalis is ‘perhaps the richest I96l,“ he said. “The novelist B.K.Narayan lived nearby. I attended single musical talent of the last half century’ and his band ‘one of the University of Delhi for a B.A. in economics. I came to the the greatest ensembles in the history ofjazz.’ You will look in vain United States to study for a PhD in English literature. I wound up for proof on this CD.” at Purdue University in Indiana, but lefi soon afterwards for Ohio Marsalis is artistic director of Jan at Lincoln Center, Crouch is State University in Columbus. Here my academic ambitions, such his adviser. It is said among New York musicians that Marsalis as they were, expired, and here I have stayed- plays Charlie McCarthy to Crouch’s . To what extent A “My parents live in New Delhi. I have a sister who is a this is true is hard to detennine. But this much is certain. Marsalis microbiologist at the University of Chicago. I listened to my first is entrusted with assigning corrrmissions to composers. He has thus jazz records at a fi'iend’sehouse»in India: Charlie Christian and far shown a proclivity to assign them to his cronies, or to himself, Django Reinhardt. The most advanced young people I knew and Lincoln Center’s administrators see no conflict of interests in listened to jazz. this, or, if they do are too intimidated to object. Cronyism of “Jazz does not pass easily through the filter of Indian life. I course is endemic to all commissioning and grant programs, carmot bear Indian music of any kind, neither Indian classical including those in the sciences. g music nor the jungly twaddle you hear in Indian movies. My Marsalis’s own compositions are uniformly awfiil. I saw him parents were interested in South Indian classical music. My mother and his group perform one of them at the in that is said to have had a talent for singing when she was a young clutteredjazz concert presented early in the Clinton administration. woman. My matemal grandmother is said to have started many Marsalis had the misfortune to play immediately ahead of Clark distinguished South Indian musicians on their way. But this is Ten'y and the late Red Rodney, both gigantic jan players and far family lore and I cannot vouch for it. his superiors, and then by the dazzling Jon Faddis. All three of “I dislike rock-and-roll music intensely. Not only the music but them showed him up. its ethos.“ The worst moment carrre when he armounced that his group OfJoe Cools Blues, by Wynton and Ellis Marsalis, Bala wrote, would now play a “tone poem” he had composed. That a small “Wynton Marsalis has always been a serious and ambitious jazz group hardly has the instrumentation for a tone poem (another musician; or pompous and sanctimonious, depending on your point European form) went unnoticed by ’s jazz of view. He is not known for his wit or the lightness of his touch. critic, who next day used the term in an obediently praiseful This compact disc, a musical celebration of the Peanuts comic review. The “tone poem” was essentially the first three notes of strip, is a pleasing departure fi-om the grinding solemnity of his Three Blind Mice. most recent work . . . . The liner notes are by Stanley Crouch, who But it is Blood on the Fields, premiered at Lincoln Center in does his customary violence to the English language.” I994, that has aroused the special ire of musicians. Someone Of They Came to Swing: Jazz at Lincoln Center (Columbia), he somehow obtained a page ofMarsalis’ original score before it went wrote, “The young Wynton Marsalis was an exhaustive soloist, to the copyist. It was notable, first of all, for its infantile script. addicted to overstatement and reluctant to edit. These qualities are Some musicians have speculated that it is an attempt to imitate the now most apparent in his compositions — such as Back to Basics kind of sketch scores that and Billy Strayhom sent —— which can seem endless.” to their copyists. But the copyists, be it noted in their case, had Of Citi Movement (Columbia) lyer wrote: “This is another been trained in their orchestrational methods and techniques. Like instance of the New Solemnity in jazz; presiding over it here is the Harold Danko’s contract rider, this bit of Marsalis score went patriarchal figure of the movement. Stanley Crouch’s liner notes, whizzing out on fax machines and by mail, and musicians every- unintelligible and seething with self-importance, provide comic where laughed at it. relief.” The laughterbecame choked when, recently, this interminable And ofIn This House (Columbia), he wrote, “Like its predeces- piece (itlasts three hours) won the Pulitzer Prize. sor, this Wynton Marsalis album requires two CDs. It is a ‘jazz One ofthe judges on the Pulitzer committee was Howard Reich suite’ divided into three sections and intended to represent a of The Chicago Tribune, Marsalis’ long-time apologist. When the religious ceremony. Churchgoers are likely to be bewildered by it. furor in New York over charges of racism in Marsalis’ Lincoln “Long stretches of this excruciatingly boring album are filled Center first broke, Reich wrote a piece defending Lincoln Center, with the sounds of barnyard strife. Relief in the form of Wycliffe quoting Rob Gibson, executive producer and director of Jan at Lincoln Center, denying it. But Reich did not present the evidence condescension toward jazz in any significant musical figure of that — powerful and extensive evidence indeed — that Crouch and world, and the British critic Max Harrison said he never did either. Marsalis not only had excluded white artists but older black And so the idea that Wynton Marsalis has single-handedly, and composers, such as George Russell, as well. for the first time, achieved “respectability” in jazz is, and I must For Reich to be appointed to the Pulitzer music committee and grope for a word, balderdash. then to participate in giving an award for a piece most musicians The Pulitzer prizes have always been politicized. Swanberg’s (and a lot of audience) find unendurably dull, “smells”, as one book, Citizen Hearst, a highly-acclaimed book, was nominated for musician put it, “like a setup.” a Pulitzer. But the Pulitzer people, according to reports at the time, And then, to compound the flagrancy, Reich wrote a piece, tumed it down in fear of offending the Hearst family. Nothing has under a huge headline and with a photo of Marsalis filling about changed. The Pulitzer Board last year passed up the brilliantly a third of the above-the-fold space on the front of the Backstage effective crusading journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz. section of the April 15, 1997, Tribune, praised his own participa- Insofar as music is concerned, a pal] has hung over the Pulitzer tion in the selection. Finally, a Pulitzer for Jazz, the leadline awards since 1965. That year the music committee decided that no proclaimed, followed by a subhead saying Marsalis gains respect composition worthy ofthe award had been submitted. Instead, they for an American idiom, as if countless musicians hadn’t already elected to give Duke Ellington a special award for “the vitality and achieved this goal except among the most willfully insular of originality of his total production,” a sort of lifetime achievement academics. Jazz has been taught in full, formal, degree courses in award. But their superiors disagreed and denied Ellington the innumerable American universities. It is estimated that there are award, which caused two members of the committee, Robert Eyer between 15,000 to 20,000 jazz bands in the high schools, colleges, and Wmthrop Sargent (who had written one of the earliest and universities ofAmerica. was president of the important books on jazz) to resign. ' New England Conservatory fiom 1967 — thirty years ago -— to Thus the award to Marsalis smacks of belated amends, like an 1977, and while he was there constantly championed and advanced Academy Awards statuette given to an actor or actress because the cause ofjazz. Geri Allen has taught there. John McNiel teaches earlier work deserved but didn’t get it. But in this instance, it isn’t there now; so do George Russell and others. But Marsalis was the that Marsalis’ own work deserved it: the work of others did. first to gain respect for jazz, as the headline suggests? Blood on the Fields had its premiere performance at Lincoln Reich writes of Marsalis’ “brilliantly conceived orchestral Center on April l, 1994, and has now been released by Columbia writing,” which seems to establish that he had never seen the page Records in a three-CD package. It features jazz orchestra and of that “score" circulated among musicians. voices, including those of and . It Newspapers across the country noted that this was the first time uses, among other things, elemts of Ellington and Mingus and the award had been given for jazz The real news was that the Kurt Weill. The Weill imitation is particularly grating, because Pulitzer organization had been so late in recognizing America’s Marsalis lacks a sense of humor, and thus the biting irony of the greatest single contribution to the arts, when major classical Weill-Bertolt Brecht works is lacking. Sir Thomas Beecham said, musicians — and critics, such as the late R.D. Darrell — were “Mediocre composers borrow. Great composers steal.” recognizing the significance of jazz as far back as the l920s. In Nothing illustrates his point better than the works of Wynton statements published in the August 1924 issue of Etude, Felix Marsalis. And Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Borowski, president of the Chicago Musical College and music critic for Chicago newspapers, said, “I find in this form of music something peculiarly American, our restlessness, for instance,” Blood on the Fields: A Review while composer Jolm Alden Carpenter, who had studied with Elgar, wrote, “l am convinced that our contemporary popular music by john Heard (please note that I avoid labelling it ‘jazz’) is by far the most One ofthe most respected bassists injazz — “a watershed bass spontaneous, the most personal, the most important musical player; " Oscar Peterson has called him —— John Heard was playing expression that America has achieved.” John Philip Sousa was alto and baritone saxophones professionally in his teens, then among those who praised the new music. switched to bass, working with Tommy Turrentine and Booker And two years prior to that, in 1922, composer and musicogra- Ervin. He worked with Al Jarreau in San Francisco from I966, pher Carl Engel, later editor of The Musical Quarterly, in an article when he was 28, until I968, then with Wes Montgomery Sonny in The/ltlantic took a remarkably accurate measure of the value of Rollins, Ranay Weston, Ahmad Jamal, Count Basie, , jazz. Later the music was extensively praised by the British Oscar Peterson (for more than three years), Jon Hendricks, and composer and conductor Constant Lambert, and in the and Joe Wlliams. He is also a painter and sculptor Some years ago, ’60s by the American critic and musicologist Henry Pleasants. In while touring Nigeria with Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson, he my own experience as a classical music critic, I never encountered made it a point to meet one ofthe master ebony carvers in Benin. A friend told the white-haired carver that they had a visitor from Indians? Smallpox alone killed off entire cultures, complete America. The old man looked at John and said in Ibo, "Welcome civilizations. Look what was done to the Aztecs. The Indians home. " owned the land, and so they got rid of them "— and then erased all the evidence. Wynton Marsalis has listened to Mingus and Ellington. But not The character of Jesse in Blood on the Fields comes across as enough. There is more music in Fables ofFaubus, Better Get It in a wimp. This reinforces the idea that those who survived the slave Ybur Soul, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, or any other track of ships were weaklings. I doubt that very seriously. No weak slave Mingus’s music, than in this entire three-hour “oratorio.” ever got to this shore. That’s why we’ve got jazz, and words like I tried to listen to this twice. I tried. I really tried. I was only banjo. That’s why the athletes are performing the way they do: able to get through it in its entirety once. only the strong got here. Aside from its musical shortcomings, it minimizes slavery in In the notes to this work, Crouch says, “Eventually Jesse goes America, trivializes the real history. Black and Blue, which Fats to see Juba, a wise man posing as a fool. And Juba tells him that Waller and Andy Razaf wrote for Hot Chocolates in I929, makes he needs to do three things. He has to love this new land, he has a far more powerful statement of racial pain in 32 bars than does to leam to sing with soul, and he has to learn who he will be when this entire long composition. free . . . . ” The only thing resembling any kind of originality is the use in You’ve got to love a land that took you away from your wife part of it of the New Orleans band sound. A musician friend and family, where your ass gets kicked every day? Salt on the listening to it at my house commented on how derivative it all is. wounds. No medical care. No rest. No payment. You work till you But he put it a little more strongly than that. die. The playing is no better than the writing, and the recorded Don’t forget, there were two kinds of slave. One was the kind sound, considering what this project must have cost, isn’t very that, unfortunately, all civilizations have: the kind who turn against good. The music didn’t tum me on at all. I heard nothing in there their own to make their lot easier; and the ones who are truly that laid in my mind; and there is nothing original or personal in struggling to make things better. The former are the house niggers; Marsalis’s playing. And it doesn’t swing. He is now 35 years old. the latter are the rest of us. Clifibrd Brown was dead at 25, Booker Little at 23, Lee Morgan White people don’t want to hear the term. They want to believe at 33, Charlie Parker at 34. They were all playing original and that all blacks tumed in other blacks, cried when the massuh personal things when they were very young, and their stuff is caught a cold, worried about the massuh’s daughter, and the black timeless. Nothing Marsalis does is timeless. women just loved to feed their kids. For Stanley Crouch to compare Marsalis in the liner notes to As an expression of black American history, there is only one Ellington, and to suggest that he surpasses what was being written word for Blood on the Fields. It’s bullshit. It romanticizes slavery. in the 1950s, is just nonsense. He says that the piece is “in a It minimizes the degree of it. category beyond all other jazz composition.” That’s ludicrous. You have to Uncle Tom to play up to that New York society. What I don’t understand is how these people in New York got And that’s what this is all about. That’s why Marsalis got the behind Marsalis and Crouch. But then perhaps I do. Marsalis is Pulitzer Prize. Since it’s the new fashion to ask, “Shall we saying what the New York East Side establishment wants to hear apologize for slavery?” this is the Pulitzer establislunent’s way of coming out of a black man. It’s all right to write about slavery, but doing it. make it like a soap opera. There is no dance in this music. If you listen to Ellington’s Blood on the Fields begins with a black man and a black Black, Brown and Beige, with Mahalia Jackson singing Come woman being brought over on a slave ship that smells like a grease Sunday, you hear the difference. Crouch’s notes talk about Marsalis pit, a toilet, beyond anything we can imagine, with the people drawing on “the vitality of the Negro spirituals and the blues.” I lying in chains in the tiers above —- stacked up to save space — don’t hear it in his music. And the one thing you notice in black pissing and defecating on those lying below, and the crew raping church music is the sound of dancing in it. It’s not in this piece. their women. And this is turned into a love story. That’s the A lot of black jazz musicians hate what is going on at Lincoln establishment. Sure, write about slavery. But don’t offend us. Center. They will say it to me privately but not publicly. They’re We always hear about the Holocaust in Europe. How many afraid. This is the first time in jazz history that someone has held books, plays, movies, television dramas, and documentaries about leadership not through talent but through intimidation. it have we seen? And. by comparison, how many about the horror I get bent out of shape about these guys. It’s time something of slavery in America? It would be interesting to know how many was done about it. They’ve been getting away with this for a long, people died on those slave ships and were thrown over the sides. long time. Millions? — John Heard And what do we hear about what was done to the American Copyright 1997 by Gene Lees